According to Apple, we're supposed to eschew Flash entirely. Unfortunartely, some websites still use it. The 64-bit build of Minefield (Firefox beta) doesn't support Flash on some platforms because there is no 64-bit flash. This isn't a problem for Safari, which runs Flash in its own 32-bit helper process. So why can't Firefox do this?

That's fine for Linux, but what about MacOS? Of course, Mozilla has always put Mac support on the back burner. Still can't use Firefox without running down my battery -- it prevents the computer from going to sleep after a period of inactivity. This bug has been in the database for a LONG time with no attention.

I can't believe how many bugs I came across that were FF/Mac specific. You'd think the rendering engine would be consistent across platforms but...not really. I came across other bug reports from people who assumed that testing in FF/Windows meant it would work fine in FF/OSX. Mozilla really treats the OSX version as second rate.

Oh and with the same ajax project Chrome had zero cross-platform issues. Chrome was just a pleasure to work with. IE8 wasn't a big deal either.

Sorry to say but i think this is because Apple users are mostly users (leechers). VLC has the same problem with there Mac version, to few people who contribute to the platform in result that the Mac version is not as far as the other platforms.

I can't believe how many bugs I came across that were FF/Mac specific. You'd think the rendering engine would be consistent across platforms but...not really. I came across other bug reports from people who assumed that testing in FF/Windows meant it would work fine in FF/OSX. Mozilla really treats the OSX version as second rate.

Oh and with the same ajax project Chrome had zero cross-platform issues. Chrome was just a pleasure to work with. IE8 wasn't a big deal either.

Mozilla could just put their Mac OS X development time into Camino and be done with it since it has always been the light, quick browser that sparked the development of Firefox. I'd use Camino, but without Mozilla's push, things lose momentum.

I've been using 3.7a6pre/4.0b2pre for a while now and it's quite good but there is no hope that Mozilla will wake up and give Mac OS X a good effort.

ON WINDOWS, maybe. Might even succeed on Mac, too. Linux is a completely different job. I don't myself trust on OpenGL to be the right technology for the job. XRender sucks because the mainstream drivers totally blow with it (Nvidia...).

Linux needs fast software rendering. WebKit has that. Gecko is - currently -ridiculously slow in rendering and as long as Mozilla concentrate on keeping the fuzz on with Windows & Direct2D, there's no hope in the Linux world.

Firefox already feels much slicker on Windows than on Linux when using KWin and OpenGL-based compositing with Nvidia drivers. Chrome and the others don't suffer of the same blow in rendering performance.

Firefox 3.7a6pre (which is an alpha version of upcoming Firefox 4) scores 97% on acid3 standards tests, which is not quite up to webkit but good enough not to worry about it all that much.

Well that would be a moot point if FF, Chrome and Safari used the same engine.

Why exactly should Mozilla drop their best-of-breed browser technology and move to webkit?

It's your opinion that it is best of breed. As I stated before I came across all kinds of bugs in the OSX version. Wasn't the web supposed to simplify cross platform development? With Safari and Chrome I could just test in Windows but with FF I needed to boot up the Mac due to Mozilla not caring about keeping the rendering engine consistent. You can go look through the Mozilla bug reports yourself to confirm this.

Keep in mind that just because a browser follows W3C specs on paper does not mean that it is free of rendering quirks. Browser engines are very complex and W3C standards are only guidelines to follow.

If Mozilla switched to Webkit it would be a major boon for web developers.

According to Apple, we're supposed to eschew Flash entirely. Unfortunartely, some websites still use it. The 64-bit build of Minefield (Firefox beta) doesn't support Flash on some platforms because there is no 64-bit flash. This isn't a problem for Safari, which runs Flash in its own 32-bit helper process. So why can't Firefox do this?

A better question right now is why you absolutely need to use the 64bit version when it is absolutely not ready. Do you often hit that 2GB memory limit?

This is an oversight on who's part? Seems like an oversight on Adobe's part for not having 64 bit flash for the Mac. You are asking Mozilla to place some 32 bit hack into the browser because Adobe is slackin?

Yeah, I'm basically suggesting that. Adobe does very poor work, leaving it up to the rest of us to work around their problems. People just need to accept that until we can replace Flash with something else.

According to Apple, we're supposed to eschew Flash entirely. Unfortunartely, some websites still use it. The 64-bit build of Minefield (Firefox beta) doesn't support Flash on some platforms because there is no 64-bit flash. This isn't a problem for Safari, which runs Flash in its own 32-bit helper process. So why can't Firefox do this?

Remember the "bad ol' days" when IE6 was considered the "fast" browser, and Netscape 4 was just too clunky to use, when the upstart Firefox browser was released? Remember the "wow" factor from using a web browser so many times faster than IE?

Use FF4 for a bit, and you'll experience that feeling again.

I used to think FF 3.0/3.5/3.6 was a fast, light browser. Then I used Chrome and I realised just how slow and clunky FF had become.

Using FF4 is like using FF2 after years of using IE6. It really makes you realise just how slow FF3 is for JS-heavy sites.

Haven't used it too much, can't really comment on the UI (although it's nice to have a default UI that doesn't waste 3" of vertical screen space). But, many, is the JS engine ever speedy ... even on Linux and lowly ol' XP.

Remember the "bad ol' days" when IE6 was considered the "fast" browser, and Netscape 4 was just too clunky to use, when the upstart Firefox browser was released? Remember the "wow" factor from using a web browser so many times faster than IE?

Some of us were using a browser many times as fast as IE years before Firefox even existed.

When Firefox was released and over hyped I was utterly underwhelmed. Opera was offering a better feature set in the late 90s, and Firefox was slow and unstable in comparison.

To me it just seemed like Netscape+ rather than a new browser with "wow factor".

Yeah, I used Opera 3.x back in the day, running it off a floppy in the university Windows 3.11/95 labs. It was nice! Things went downhill starting with Opera 4.x, though, and that's when I gave up on it (altough I do run each major version for a few days to see what's new/improved/worse/etc).

However, that has absolutely nothing to do with a discussion about Firefox.

By the time of IE6, Opera still had that horrendous ad in their shareware version.

So it was not Firefox who overtake Opera through hype, but Opera himself who killed their own chance to became the second most used browser today in one of most crucial moments of the browser wars, and as a side effect, made Firefox the only usable non-annoying free alternative to IE6. =)

"JaegerMonkey" is the code-name for a new JIT being developed for Mozilla's JavaScript engine. Jaeger means "hunter" in German. "Tracing" is the original JIT. "Jaeger+Tracing" is them both turned on, working together. "Interpreter" is Mozilla's JavaScript engine without any JITing. "Google V8" is the JavaScript engine for Google Chrome, and "Apple Nitro" (aka JavaScriptCore) is the JavaScript engine for Apple's Safari browser.

you have to extract the folder, put it where you want (eg: /usr/local/firefox4) and edit your typical shortcut to point to the executable file (eg: /usr/local/firefox4/firefox). I much more prefer to install things through Ubuntu Software Center or apt-get, but for Firefox 4 betas I am doing an exception.

If you just want to test the beta without affecting your normal FF profile, you can install the FoxTester extension. Point that at a directory, then copy the .tar.bz2 file for whatever version you want to test into that directory, and then you can access them via the FoxTester menu.

that's kind of funny cause ff4 doesnt feel any faster than ff3.6 here.
Now ff3.6 didn't feel slow at all. But ff4 has a new interface.. and i'm 99% sure its what gives the "wow" feeling to ppl.

Same reason they use Chrome. Nothing to do with clunkyness. Now, the new interface isn't bad anyway, I got used to it rather quick and I find it more comfortable for me than Chrome which has no title bar (and it annoys me lol)

that's kind of funny cause ff4 doesnt feel any faster than ff3.6 here.
Now ff3.6 didn't feel slow at all. But ff4 has a new interface.. and i'm 99% sure its what gives the "wow" feeling to ppl.

Try accessing a Zimbra account using FF3. Then try accessing the same Zimbra account using Chrome. Then try accessing the same Zimbra account with FF4. After that, you'll realise just how slow and clunky FF3 JS engine really is, how fast the Chrome JS engine is, and how far the FF4 JS engine has come.

Try the same with a GMail account. Or a Slashdot account.

Same reason they use Chrome. Nothing to do with clunkyness.

No, it has very little to do with the interface, and a whole lot to do with how crappy the FF3 JS engine is, compared to Chrome, Opera, Safari, etc.

Now, the new interface isn't bad anyway, I got used to it rather quick and I find it more comfortable for me than Chrome which has no title bar (and it annoys me lol)

Chrome has a title bar is you want it. Just enable system title bar in the options.

No, it has very little to do with the interface, and a whole lot to do with how crappy the FF3 JS engine is, compared to Chrome, Opera, Safari, etc.

Actually, the only reason I use Chrome is because of the interface. There is NO way I could ever use a browser without tabs on the top again (much faster mouse access). I really can't notice much of a speed difference between Chrome and Firefox.

Most people I know the use Chrome use it for the same reasons, and can't really notice any difference in speed.

I should note that once Firefox supports tabs-on-top with Linux, I will probably move back to it instead of Chrome.

"FF4 allows you to select tabs-on-top (default) or tabs-under-addressbar.

Yes, but AFAIK, not on Linux yet. "

Yes it does, on Linux. On Linux Firefox pre-releases, right-click on the menu bar away from the menus themselves, and apart from the ability to turn the navigation toolbar and the bookmarks toobar on and off, there is now an option to display "tabs on top".

Out-of-the-box default settings are: the Bookmark and Navigation toolbars are enabled, and "tabs on top" is disabled.

Many of the enticing new features open up new opportunities for AJAX and JavaScript programmers to add more razzle-dazzle and catch up with Adobe Flash, Adobe AIR, Microsoft Silverlight, and other plug-ins. The CSS transitions, still "partially supported" in Firefox 4 Beta 1, give programmers the chance to set up one model for changing the CSS parameters without writing a separate JavaScript function to do it. The browser just fades and tweaks the CSS parameters over time.

There are plenty of other little parts of HTML5 that have been slowly arriving in previous versions of Firefox but are now being more fully integerated. MathML and SVG data are now a bit easier to mix right in with old-fashioned text. The Canvas and optional WebGL layers can create custom images at the browser without waiting for a server to deliver a GIF. A handful of new tags like <header> and <figure> offer a more document-centric approach, so the browser can present information more like the data on the printed page. The <figure> tag can be matched with a <figcaption> tag and the browser will keep the two together and try to put the results near the <mark> tag.

These are just some of the options that programmers can use to add more zip to static text. Firefox 4 also adds an implementation of the Websockets API, a tool for enabling the browser and the server to pass data back and forth as needed, making it unnecessary for the browser to keep asking the server if there's anything new to report.

By the time they add in the Jaegermonkey JIT Javascript compiler, Firefox 4 will once again be right at the cutting edge of browser capabilities and performance, IMO.

There are areas in which Firefox still leads. Firefox's collection of extensions and plug-ins is still broader and more developed than any other. Firefox 4 nurtures this advantage by making it possible to turn the different extensions on and off without restarting.

That is if every browser hasn’t already released a version with HW acceleration by the time IE9 actually comes out. Besides the time frame, yes, I think IE9 is going to raise the bar because of tight integration with Windows’ capabilities.

IE has had years and years, with the field virtually all to itself, in which to develop and advance browser technology. Instead, it stagnated development of the web for years, for example refusing to implement stuff like SVG, until it got spanked by an open source, Johnny-come-lately upstart.

Deal with it.

It is exceedingly unlikely that IE9 will even be close to competitive with any of the other major browsers at versions that will be released either before it this year or at about the same time.

IE has had years and years, with the field virtually all to itself, in which to develop and advance browser technology. Instead, it stagnated development of the web for years, for example refusing to implement stuff like SVG, until it got spanked by an open source, Johnny-come-lately upstart.

Deal with it.

Deal with what? Unlike you I'm not emotionally attached to a browser. Open source advocates like you make the mistake of assuming that there are bizarro opposites of yourselves that are equally zealous of closed source. I use Chrome because it meets my needs and I will use IE9 if I find it better.

It is exceedingly unlikely that IE9 will even be close to competitive with any of the other major browsers at versions that will be released either before it this year or at about the same time.

Not so because MS has the advantage of being able to break from XP and rebuild their browser around DX11. IE9 could end up being a lot lighter due to Mozilla having to keep their codebase cross-platform.

Remember also that IE9 doesn't have to be the best at synthetic benchmarks, it just has to be "good enough" for people to not download Firefox or Chrome.

"
IE has had years and years, with the field virtually all to itself, in which to develop and advance browser technology. Instead, it stagnated development of the web for years, for example refusing to implement stuff like SVG, until it got spanked by an open source, Johnny-come-lately upstart.

Deal with it.

Deal with what? Unlike you I'm not emotionally attached to a browser. Open source advocates like you make the mistake of assuming that there are bizarro opposites of yourselves that are equally zealous of closed source. I use Chrome because it meets my needs and I will use IE9 if I find it better. "

You make the mistake of assuming that I am touting for one browser or another, or that I am touting against IE. I am not.

What I promote is the idea that there should be many browsers operating to the one open set of standards for all things. Despite your ramblings, it is true to say that Webkit, Gecko and Presto (Opera's engine) are very, very close to this ideal.

From a developer point of view, it is pretty trivial to write a web page (once) with rich content and tweak it a bit so it works fine on all three engines.

The ONLY rendering engine that is still a problem is trident. Fact. Deal with it.

It is NOT Gecko that one should be hoping is dropped, it is trident.

It is exceedingly unlikely that IE9 will even be close to competitive with any of the other major browsers at versions that will be released either before it this year or at about the same time.

Not so because MS has the advantage of being able to break from XP and rebuild their browser around DX11.

What has this got to do with anything? DX11 deals only with drawing some elements on a screen. This is a tiny part of a browser.

IE9 could end up being a lot lighter due to Mozilla having to keep their codebase cross-platform.

Doubtful. Mozilla uses OpenGL for hardware acceleration, which works cross-platform. Unfortunately, OpenGL on Windows is (probably deliberately) abysmal performance, and so Mozilla got ONE PERSON to write a Direct2D backend for Windows only. That backend happens already to out-perform IE9 beta, BTW. One persons effort. Not a big deal at all.

The overall number of computers, and therefore browsers, and therefore Windows machines, goes up all the time. IE share percentage drops all the time, even net Applications has it as dropping by 30% over the past five years.

Given that most people who had a Windows machine and were using IE five years ago are probably still using IE, this means that a lot more than 30% of people shun IE and install another browser on their new machine.

I think you might find that when Firefox 4 comes out, Firefox's share will climb again at a rate similar to the boost that came when Firefox 3 came out. Chrome will also continue to rise, probably sharper than Firefox.

It won't be long before even Net Applications has to admit that the equation has become:

(Gecko + Webkit) > Trident

That means that developers will be able to write fancy, rich content web pages, such as YouTube-like sites, and cloud apps, that work on most browsers without any plugin required.

Some of that "cool stuff" will be beyond the capabilities of IE9.

This will only accelerate the trend of people installing a browser other than IE (most people will install one in addition to IE).

One they install another browser, and discover extensions that allow them to do things they want to actually do, then word-of-mouth will even further accelerate that trend.